It sounds ironically peaceful, doesn't it? If it wasn't ironic, it was real. It represents the frustrations of a grown man who's had a tired past, and suddenly has an idea that he'd love to pass his thought along. Eminem took words and melodies to a whole new level, a level perhaps so high, that only the likes of Lennon or Dylan could take it.Įminem's Slim Shady LP goes past rap.

This album became a cornerstone for young teens everywhere, just like Eminem himself, growing up without fathers and mothers, living their lives in poverty. So they expressed their anger through this disk. The niche consisted of rebellious young teens, who couldn't rap along with big money rap. With the release of the Slim Shady LP, Eminem had found the niche that was well hidden beneath the splendor of rap music. Eminem would later predict that he had 'created an army of angry, white boys.' Oh, and he had. Eminem suddenly became a voice of truth than people could connect to.Īnd people did connect. Songs like 'Rock Bottom', 'Just Don't Give a F***', 'Guilty Conscience' and '97 Bonnie and Clyde' were different from mainstream rap. However, Eminem looked straight at mainstream rap, and turned around. They called him a 'fad', who wouldn't last too long. This truth was so opposite from mainstream rap at the time, people predicted the same fate about Eminem as they did when the Beatles first raised hairs over on the American airwaves. And he spoke of them in a tone so real, it was like you were watching his biography through a fine tooth comb. To say it in rap meant preaching the truth. When rap was introduced in the late eighties, it was all about truth. The writing was breathtaking and skillful, but what made this record special was what it accomplished.įirst of all, this LP bought rap back from the hollows of a money hungry, flashy and absent substance limelight, to the raw and gritty sound that had started it all. But it wasn't the writing that was revolutionary. Shady shunned everything from women, 'gave a girl herpes in exchange for syphilis', to gay males, in an amusing skit where Ken Kaniff is trying to hit on him. Yet Slim's representation wasn't the most politically correct. Slim expressed the past of a white boy living in Detroit, who's so into rap he walks miles just to get to his friends house, who had a tape recorder. Slim Shady extracted from Eminem, born Marshall Mathers III, the tough, fatherless past he had lived through. Slim would take over Eminem like Hyde over his creator. True, Eminem wrote this album while his mind was spinning circles around a creation he had created while in the washroom of a broken down flat - Slim Shady. Yet that is not the reason why this album should be given recognition. The lyrics express raw emotion, the beats are almost comical rap and the mood is deep and aggressive. To grant this album a title any less than 'masterpiece' would be a shame to hip hop and its many fans.

Eminem the slim shady lp tracklist